Member Profile: The University of Illinois College of Medicine

Background

With more than 2600 medical students and residents, the University of Illinois College of Medicine is the country's largest medical school. It offers medical education programs at four sites in Illinois: Chicago, Peoria, Rockford, and Urbana-Champaign. The Chicago site serves as the main campus, housing all college-wide administrative offices.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago (commonly referred to as P&G) opened its doors on September 26, 1882, with a class of 100 students and a faculty of 27 physicians. At the West Side Free Dispensary, students in small groups could observe pathological cases and their treatment. Patients were classified according to the affected area or system of the body heart, lungs, eyes, ears, skin or nervous system. The dispensary also furnished material for college clinics in medicine, surgery, gynecology, obstetrics, ophthalmology, neurology, and pediatrics. In its first three years, the dispensary registered 20,353 patients and dispensed 17,347 prescriptions.

In 1913, after years of negotiations, the P&G faculty and alumni donated stock to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees to establish the University of Illinois College of Medicine. In 1970, the Illinois legislature voted to expand the college to three additional sites: Peoria, Rockford and Urbana. Their purpose was to provide access to care for all citizens in the state and increase opportunities for Illinois residents to attend medical school.

The College of Medicine has grown to become part of one of the largest health sciences centers in the country with a collective 300 million dollars in research grants. It maintains an internationally renowned faculty of approximately 4,000 individuals across the sites. Various types of professional service are rendered by its physicians, such as primary care, specialty practice, research, teaching, preventative medicine, and administration. Medical students have the opportunity to become familiar with several professional roles and to choose the role best suited for their individual goals and abilities.

Innovation

First to perform robotic hepatectomy in U.S. (2005)

Peoria's Donald E. Rager, M.D., Clinical Skills Laboratory, offers students and medical personnel training in the university's first human-patient simulation-based laboratory (2005)

Home to the world's highest-field human MRI (2004)

Urbana's Paul Lauterbur shares Nobel Prize in Physiology for Medicine for developing a way to create noninvasive images of the human body with nuclear magnetic resonance (2003)

First to implant artificial retina in human eye (2000)

First to perform living-donor kidney/pancreas transplant in Illinois (1997)

First to install ophthalmic laser device in Illinois (1970)

First to successfully separate twins conjoined by the head (1952)

First to establish a center for craniofacial abnormalities (1949)

First to use electroencephalograms for clinical applications (1949)

First to install beta electron accelerator for medical applications (1940s)

Discovery

Awarded $20 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to research blood disorders

Received $9.6 million grant for autism research

Received $5.2 million grant from the National Institute of Health for a comprehensive sickle cell center

Awarded $1.9 million grant from the State of Illinois to establish comprehensive sickle cell center

Awarded $2 million by the Illinois Regenerative Medicine Institute (IRMI) of the State of Illinois to establish a Center for the Development of Stem Cell Therapies for Human Diseases

Named a National Institutes of Health Islet Cell Resource Center and awarded a three-year $3.25 million grant

Offered a gift of $1 million by the Christopher Family Foundation for the Chicago Project, an international consortium of physician-scientists who are seeking a functional cure for diabetes

Current Projects

In order to better implement consistent security standards, the College of Medicine is in the process of moving all of its departments and users into a Active Directory infrastructure. This project will evolve the College of Medicine from a multi-silo environment to a common secure environment.

The University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago currently uses the Cerner system as its EMR. This system is in the process of being expanded to the Rockford Campus. Access to an EMR will increase the quality and consistency of the patient care that is provided by the UI Rockford clinics. In addition, it will provide the opportunity to provide residents at the Rockford campus with the opportunity to be trained in the use of Electronic Medical Records.

The College of Medicine has recently completed the acquisition of a Content Management System, SitePublish. This will allow the college to have a common look and feel across all of its Web sites.